Export to Refworks Export to EndNote Email
Report an Issue

There's no place like home : Home, mobility, and U.S. military kids

Author:
Livecchi, C. M.
Published:
[University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2014.
Physical Description:
1 electronic document
Additional Creators:
Dowler, Lorraine
Access Online

Availability

I Want It

Finding items...

Restrictions on Access:
Open Access.
Summary:
The United States is a society of deep connections to place. The common question Where are you from? is often used as a means of pinning an individual's history to a geographic location. Underlying this question is the assumption that people invest their identities in place and that place is home. Yet the United States has also long been characterized as the most mobile society in the West. Few Americans are as mobile as active duty military personnel and their families, who engage in long-distance moves an average of once every three years. Youth raised in these circumstances (military youth) experience childhoods marked by constant uprooting and resettling. The mobility they know is thoroughly militarized and is rationalized by the state as an unavoidable consequence of the need for national security and readiness. This state-sanctioned mobility sets them apart from other highly mobile groups such as transnational migrants, refugees, homeless youth, and Travelers.This dissertation examines the experiences of military youth with regard to home, mobility, identity, and militarization. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 43 youth (ages 18 to 25) from active duty military families, survey data, mapping exercises, and primary documents, I analyze the ways that military youth construct home in light of their mobility, the strategies they use to settle into new places, and the ways that mobility and militarization impact their identities and prompt new formulations of place and home in the process. Their experiences reveal tensions between mobility and rootedness in American society, and suggest that militarization is a deep, fundamental force in their everyday lives.
Other Subject(s):
Genre(s):
Dissertation Note:
Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University 2014.
Technical Details:
The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
View MARC record | catkey: 20513447